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Friday, January 30, 2015

Head And Shoulders Baby 1 2 3 (Information, Lyrics, & Videos)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post presents comments about the children's recreational song "Head And Shoulders Baby 1, 2, 3. Lyrics and video examples of this song are also included in this oist.

The content of this post is provided for folkloric, cultural, and recreational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are featured on these videos and thanks to the publishers of these videos on YouTube. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.

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DESCRIPTION
"Head And Shoulder Baby 1 2 3" (also known as "Head And Shoulders Baby") is an African American adaptation of the children's movement rhyme "Head And Shoulders Knees And Toes".*

"Head And Shoulder Baby 1 2 3" appears to be rather widely known in the United States and appears to be most often performed as a partner hand clap game with pantomined actions. However, "Head And Shoulders Baby" is also performed by individuals who clap their own hands and pantomine its words.

*My sense that this song is of African American composition is its percussive nature, its textual pattern, and the fact that African Americans are the documented sources of early examples of this children's recreational song.

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LYRICS
There are two different forms of "Head And Shoulder Baby 1 2 3" and different versions of those two forms. I believe that the oldest form of this song (which I refer to here as "Form #1) is limited to verses that feature two different parts of the body.

HEAD AND SHOULDERS BABY 1 2 3, (form #1)
Head and shoulders baby 1, 2, 3
Head and shoulders baby 1, 2, 3
Head and shoulders
Head and shoulders
Head and shoulders baby 1, 2, 3

A variant of "Form #1" includes other movements which are pantomined (for example, "tie your shoe", "do a dance", "turn around").

The second form of "Head And Shoulder Baby 1 2 3" refers to body parts and also includes the verse that begins with the line "I ain't been to 'Frisco" or similar beginning words. That is a floating verse that is found in a number of old (pre 1940s) African American songs.

Well, I ain't' been to 'Frisco.
I ain't been to school.
I ain't been to college.
But I ain't no fool.
To the front.
To the back.
To the side side side.
To the front.
To the back.
To the side side side.

Milk the cow baby 1, 2, 3 [Follow the above pattern.]

Round the world, baby 1 2 3 [Follow the above pattern.]

Well, I ain't been to 'Frisco [etc]
-snip-
Here's that video:
Head and Shoulders Baby

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TEMPO
The tempo for "Head And Shoulders Baby 1 2 3", as it was "originally" sung by African American girls and boys is much faster than how it is sung in almost all of the videos of this song that are found online (including almost all of the videos found in this post.) The fast pace of this song is what makes it fun to do.

Documentation of the fast tempo of "Head And Shoulders Baby" is found in the album notes for that song in the 1971 album Little Johnny Brown featuring American storyteller/singer Ella Jenkins and girls and boys from uptown Chicago. Referring to that song, Ella Jenkins writes "It can be challenging to keep up with the fast tempo of the recording". http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/liner_notes/smithsonian_folkways/SFW45026.pdf [hereafter given as "Ella Jenkins: Little Johnny Brown".]

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TIMELINE
1950s
I don't know when the movement song "Head And Shoulders Baby 1, 2, 3" was first composed. However,
I remember performing "Head And Shoulders Baby 1, 2, 3" as a partner hand clap game in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the 1950s. I played this game with my sisters and our friends before learning "Head And Shoulders Knees And Toes" in school. My recollection is that we played "Head And Shoulders Baby 1, 2, 3" as a pantomine game and not as a partner hand clap game. The object of the "Head And Shoulders Baby" game was to keep up with the words to the song (do the right motions while singing the song). If you couldn't keep up with the fast pace of the song, you were out.

I only remember the first verse and third first given above (Form #1). I think that sometimes we played this game as an individual don't re

I remember thinking that "Head And Shoulders" was a song for babies while "Head And Shoulders Baby 1, 2, 3" was for "older kids".

In the above section on the tempo of "Heads And Shoulders Baby", I referred to Ella Jenkins' 1971 album which included that song. In addition to commenting on the song's tempo, Jenkins wrote that she first saw the song "done by a group of girls and boys at the Elliot Donnelly Youth Center" (Chicago, Illinois). The verses for that recording were "head and shoulders", knees and ankles" and "ankles and toes". Of course, that could have been just a simplification of the way the song was sung by the children in the youth center. Ella Jenkins then wrote that "Head And Shoulders Baby" was a "traditional chant". The term "traditional" may mean "a folk song that has no known composer". However, the use of "traditional" doesn't convey any information about when this song was first sung. The fact that Ella Jenkins, who is known for her repertoire of old African American children's songs, didn't know "Head And Shoulders Baby" before she saw it done by that group of Chicago children suggests that that song may not have been widely known when Ella Jenkins first started performing in the 1960s.

An example of "Head And Shoulders Baby 1, 2, 3" is included in the 2003 book Yo Mama!: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes, and Children's Rhymes from Urban Black America by Onwuchekwa Jemie. https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1592130291. The often bawdy (dirty) examples that are given in this book were "Collected primarily in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia during the classic era of black street poetry (i.e., during the late 1960s and early 1970s). It's very likely that at least some of the verses for "Head And Shoulders Baby" that are found in this book have "nasty" connotations. In addition to the standard verses ("head and shoulders"; "knees and ankles", ankles and hips"), that book's example contains these verses which are also pantomined: "close the door", "zip the zipper", "around the world", "tie your shoe", "milk the cow", and "around the world."

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1980s
A video of "head And Shoulders" from a mid 1980s Canadian children's television show is given below as Example #3.

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ADDITIONAL VIDEOS OF "HEAD AND SHOULDERS BABY 1, 2, 3"
These videos are presented in chronological order based on their publishing date on YouTube with the oldest example given first.

Example #1: Head and shoulders baby 1 2 3

kiara yasmilet, Uploaded on Dec 17, 2011
lolz
-snip-
lolz= lols [laugh out loud] with a "z" added in place of an "s" [meaning laughing a lot]

This video is an example of Form #1 of "Head And Shoulders Baby 1. 2. 3".

Here's the words to that example which is sung uptempo: [This is my transcription of that video. Additions and corrections are welcome.]

Head and shoulder baby 1, 2, 3 [2x]
Head and shoulder [3x]
Head and shoulder baby 1, 2, 3

Tummy thighs baby 1, 2, 3 [same as above pattern]

Knees and ankles baby 1, 2, 3 [same as above pattern]

Scoop the ice cream [same as above pattern]

Around the world

All together now [Do all the actions in the order they were sung.]

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Example #2: Sedgwick music program -Head & shoulder baby 1 2 3

.

Asmita Kulkarni, Published on May 22, 2013
-snip-
This video is an example of Form #2 of "Head And Shoulders Baby 1. 2. 3".

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Example #3: Sharon, Lois & Bram - Head and Shoulders Baby

Sharon Lois Bram, Published on Nov 21, 2013

**I do not own the rights to this content**

Season 3, Episode 2
-snip-
This is a clip of "The Elephant Show", a Canadian children's television show that featured the children's song recording artists Sharon, Lois, and Bram. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Show "The Elephant Show (from the second season onward, Sharon, Lois & Bram's Elephant Show) is a Canadian children's television show. It originally ran on CBC from 1984 until 1989.".

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I'm an African American mother, grandmother, & retired human services administrator. For more than forty years I have shared adapted West African stories with audiences in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.
I have four blogspots: pancocojams, zumalayah, cocojams2, and .Civil Rights Songs. Much of the content of these blogs were previously found on my cocojams and jambalayah cultural websites. I curate all of these blogs on a voluntary basis.
Each of these blogs have the primary goal of raising awareness about cultural aspects of African American culture and of other Black cultures throughout the world, particularly in regards to music & dance traditions.
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